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Running Linux on My MacBook

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Re: Running Linux on My MacBook

#131

Post by kuon »

I switched to sway, which has very good performances, Firefox under wayland also flies, it's been the fastest browsing experience so far. I can have hundred of tabs open with tree style tabs with no lag whatsoever.

Sway has absolutely zero tearing, for this it is very good.

But, a few issues (mostly wayland and not sway related):

· First you need an AMD card, I don't really have a problem with that as their cards are good now. But if your laptop has nvidia, you are screwed.

· Copy paste still fuzzy

· No global hotkey. Well you have to configure them at the WM level, things like discord push to mute will not work.

· Hard to capture (OBS cannot capture wayland app yet without major tinkering and testing)

· Many popup widgets are positioned on the wrong monitor (like fcitx popup for japanese input)

· Complex X apps are slow or will just crash crash, for example qgis is unusable in X mode and crash in wayland mode, audacity do not update properly…

· Some things require tons of tinkering to get right, like having the proper rendering pipeline, for example using mpv, but when you get it right, you can play 4k movies with 3% cpu usage.

· Tray/notification icons are hard to setup and won't work 100%.

Disclaimer: I use sway on a large desktop workstation, so I cannot comment on issues like power, sleep, external monitors…

Re: Running Linux on My MacBook

#132

Post by jki275 »

bitcharmer wrote: post #121
jki275 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used Java in the enterprise plenty. Not a fan. And no, it's really never faster than properly written C/C++. And no, the actual HFT stuff is written in C++.

> And no, the actual HFT stuff is written in C++ This is how I know you have no idea what you're talking about. Source: been working on low-latency HFT Java apps for shops like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, UBS and others for 10+ years. Not going to reply any more. Not worth it.

Of course you have.

Not worth it, indeed.

Re: Running Linux on My MacBook

#133

Post by vz8 »

pja wrote: post #87
kerkeslager wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're seeing an extreme case here. Macbooks are actively breaking other OSes. Better to treat it as: "look how much you can bend Linux to work on a proprietary toaster", rather than "look how hard it is to run Linux on a laptop". It's true that Macbooks are an extreme case, but as far as I can tell, there is not a laptop which runs Linux out of the box where tinkering won't be necessary. Let's take another extreme…

It’s weird, people report all these issues, but in the past I bought Thinkpads for years & they always "just worked". Took a risk & picked up a Dell XPS 13 a couple of years ago, and that "just worked" too. It’s like I live in parallel universe of Linux hardware support to some of you.

Same. Never had an issue with Thinkpads nor Dells of all stripes.

Now the Surface Pro on the other hand, was a disastrous time sink.

Re: Running Linux on My MacBook

#134

Post by overgard »

bitcharmer wrote: post #39
peteretep wrote: post #5

Thank you for writing this! Whenever I see people using Linux as their main laptop OS, I'm struck by remembering the amount of tinkering needed circa 1999 which was the last time I did it. Having read this -- the custom scripts, the "suspend still doesn't work properly" -- it feels like that's still the case.

> it feels like that's still the case Very much not true these days. Linux on laptops is (in overwhelming majority) a great experience today. I suggest you just try out one of the live images for Ubuntu or Fedora. On a tangential note I'm surprised that it's still relatively common on HN to see comments like "Linux on desktop doesn't work" or "Java is slow". That was 20 years ago. The world has moved on.

Honestly I just don't think that's true, every laptop I've had I've tried to put Linux on and it's always been a nightmare. My current one is running Ubuntu but Wifi constantly breaks unless I do a stupid hack with the airplane button, power support is weird and flaky, etc. etc.

Re: Running Linux on My MacBook

#135

Post by codys »

kuon wrote: post #131

I switched to sway, which has very good performances, Firefox under wayland also flies, it's been the fastest browsing experience so far. I can have hundred of tabs open with tree style tabs with no lag whatsoever. Sway has absolutely zero tearing, for this it is very good. But, a few issues (mostly wayland and not sway related): · First you need an AMD card, I don't really have a problem with that as their cards are…

I run sway too, but I've kept firefox using X11 instead of native wayland due to the trackpad scrolling in firefox under wayland not being exact (ie: it jumps as if I had a mouse with a clicky scroll wheel instead of exactly following finger motion). In x11, I set `MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1` to get exact trackpad scroll.

Re: Running Linux on My MacBook

#136

Post by 1e-9 »

peteretep wrote: post #5

Thank you for writing this! Whenever I see people using Linux as their main laptop OS, I'm struck by remembering the amount of tinkering needed circa 1999 which was the last time I did it. Having read this -- the custom scripts, the "suspend still doesn't work properly" -- it feels like that's still the case.

You can configure a new Dell XPS or Dell Mobile Precision laptop with Ubuntu for a no-hassle solution.

If you want CentOS or Red Hat, I've had good luck picking any Ubuntu Dell that is also listed as being tested and certified for Red Hat at https://access.redhat.com/ecosystem/search/#/ecosystem/Red%2.... The only real hassle has been when I wanted to use an Nvidia driver, which requires a driver reinstall after kernel updates, although I believe you can now avoid this with DKMS. I expect that Fedora would also work without issue on any of these.

Re: Running Linux on My MacBook

#137

Post by mbreese »

vz8 wrote: post #133
pja wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s weird, people report all these issues, but in the past I bought Thinkpads for years & they always "just worked". Took a risk & picked up a Dell XPS 13 a couple of years ago, and that "just worked" too. It’s like I live in parallel universe of Linux hardware support to some of you.

Same. Never had an issue with Thinkpads nor Dells of all stripes. Now the Surface Pro on the other hand, was a disastrous time sink.

How does sleep/suspend work? That was always the biggest hangup for me. Although, it's been almost a decade since I last tried. However, a colleague's Dell running Ubuntu was a nightmare. Not sure if it was the model or how he had it set up though.

Re: Running Linux on My MacBook

#138

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

jnxx wrote: post #101
Normille wrote: post #58

The trouble with almost every article that I read of this kind is that the author is either a writer or a coder. So their demands on Linux are relatively minor; a terminal, an IDE, something to mangle text with. I could probably make the full-time switch to Linux, if that was the bulk of what I did too. And I do a fair bit of writing and coding. But the majority what I do on my [OSX] computers is Art & Design related…

> But, boy, is getting to that stage in the first place a complete pain in the ballsack! > .... Both machines have >>> Nvidia graphics cards Yeah. That's painful. Don't do that.

Yeah, just don't use the best GPUs on the market and you'll be fine!

Re: Running Linux on My MacBook

#139

Post by o-__-o »

abrowne wrote: post #113
voodootrucker wrote: post #71

Off topic maybe, but my Razer Blade 15" has been and absolutely wonderful replacement for my MBP. The build quality feels just as nice, and none of the weird touchbar issues. (Running Ubuntu 19.10 presently, only issue: had to disable the USB-C port to allow it to sleep). The arrow keys are also in a slightly wonky location. It's been very disruptive to have Apple quality tank, and I'm glad they finally went back to…

I'd say a similar thing about my HP EliteBook x360 830 G6 as a 13-inch running Ubuntu 20.04. I love having a matte screen (that's still a touchscreen if I ever want it) and both USB-C and USB-A ports! HP even lets you custom order with FreeDOS so you can skip the Windows license. iFixit gives it 9/10 on repairability: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/HP+EliteBook+830+x360+G6+Repair...

I have an x360, precision 5570 (dual xeons),and a 2017 MBP. The x360 gets the most use by far. I only use the more powerful systems for gaming or when I’m modeling systems where I need more than 16gb of ram

Re: Running Linux on My MacBook

#140

Post by vaccarium »

At a previous job, a coworker got a new Mac but still wanted to use Linux. He spent several days setting the system up, and eventually got it up and running smoothly.

Except that the calendar on the lock screen somehow was in Romanian, it resisted all attempts to change the language, and he never got around to fixing it. :)

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